Tuesday, September 08, 2015

One of the more grotesque attacks on the concept of an American political commonwealth has been the steady – and, sadly, bipartisan – assault on the concept of public education. Whether it comes from uber-wealthy, oft-liberal dilettantes like Bill Gates at the elementary and secondary levels, from outright grifters like Michelle Rhee at almost every level, charter-school messianics like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, slumping goons like Chris Christie, or opportunistic weasels like Scott Walker, the very idea of public education is fighting a war on a hundred fronts against a hundred enemies, many of them camouflaged as "reform." At the end of last week, the Supreme Court of the state of Washington gave every one of these people, and everybody behind them, as resounding a kick in the ass as any court ever has delivered to anyone anywhere...